ORLANDO--Five percent of patients consume 43 percent of total healthcare costs. To drive down expenditures, the healthcare industry needs to target the most chronically ill patients, who are managed by multiple physicians and often take as many as 25 prescription medications, said Mark T. Bertolini, chairman, CEO and president of Aetna in his keynote speech at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society annual meeting.

It’s the first official day of HIMSS14 but we attended several of the pre-conference symposia yesterday to get you up to speed on the latest health IT news. Here’s what you need to know.

ORLANDO—Patient engagement is not a goal, it’s a strategy, according to a lecture delivered during the Physicians’ IT Symposium ahead of the Health Information and Management Systems Society's annual conference.

ORLANDO–-When it comes to interoperability, “build in incremental steps and don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” said Doug Fridsma, MD, PhD, chief science officer, Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society's pre-conference Interoperability Symposium.

Samsung Electronics and the University of California-San Francisco will partner to accelerate validation and commercialization of promising new sensors, algorithms and digital health technologies for preventive health solutions by establishing the UCSF-Samsung Digital Health Innovation Lab.

Reducing readmissions remains one of the most difficult challenges for hospitals everywhere. Members of the Wisconsin Hospital Association (WHA), however, have been working together to reduce the incidence of hospital readmissions within 30 days of discharge—and their performance runs far ahead of the national average.

Nowhere more than in health care are the stakes higher for quality. That said, neither is there a magic bullet that will make health-care providers more effective, according to Kelly Court, the chief quality officer for the Wisconsin Hospital Association (WHA).

A merger agreement between Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania (BCNEPA) and Highmark Inc. could bring together two of Pennsylvania’s leading not-for-profit health insurance companies and become a factor in the long-running dispute between Highmark and UPMC, the region's largest health system.